


FROM THE COLLECTION OF PROF. CALAMITY PERSNITCH III, DANS LE LIBRAIRIE EXTRAORDINAIRE, NAPOLI

by theyalwayssay



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theyalwayssay/pseuds/theyalwayssay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is there every day on the beach, as ritual as the tides and the migrations of the ocean creatures. But that was before the pale ones came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	FROM THE COLLECTION OF PROF. CALAMITY PERSNITCH III, DANS LE LIBRAIRIE EXTRAORDINAIRE, NAPOLI

She is there every day on the beach, as ritual as the tides and the migrations of the ocean creatures. She does not speak to anyone, for there is no one to speak to except the birds, nor take her eyes away from the sand beneath her feet and the trickles of water that rush over her toes. She is not so much an oddity as she is a spectacular legend, the kind that would be whispered about by the storefronts or in the comfort of the small beach cottages, candy-coloured and making the girl of the water look so out of place, as a silver minnow in a school of angelfish, the Beachcomber. But there is not a house in sight on the whole island, for she is the only human the walks among the green trees, and so there is no one to see her face. That is not to say that she is not beautiful; smooth skin the color of melted caramel, long hair that nearly mingles with the saltwater below it, and turquoise eyes that looked as though she had lifted a sample of the ocean and let it rain into her irises. Her clothing is equally strange and beautiful as her appearance; a woven fabric of the brightest blue covered in snowy white flowers that looked as though they had been plucked from the hibiscus trees that shaded the cottages, as bright as the sun overhead and neverending like of the white void of the horizon. As they near the hem, the flowers turn a dingy, darker shade the colour of the sand, showing their age and the thousands of times they have been dragged through the sea and through the sand below them. Her feet are bare as the surface of the ocean, and around her neck are hung shells. Thousands and thousands of the ocean blossoms ring her neck like beads, all white as snow or the yellow colour of the sun, they hang around her neck like chains, and yet she never feels the weight of them.

There was a time when her hair reached only her waist, and she had no fabric with which to cover herself, and no shells around her neck. But that was before they came.

They appeared in a great wave of clouds attached to floating trees, dozens of not hundreds of them flooding her shores, pale ones with deep voices and square faces, their eyes dark and cold. She spent days in the forest, in the deepest region that she knew they would not be able to get to. She was fed by the birds that guided her, the bright macaws and hummingbirds and toucans bringing her food and water. She only ventured onto the shores once in a week, and only because she could not bear to be parted from the sea for so long. And that was the day she met one of the newcomers, slightly shorter, slightly less pale, the voice slightly higher, but nevertheless strange. He saw her and did not speak for several moments, his eyes wide and afraid.

“Who are you?” he asked at last.

She did not understand his words.

“What is your name?” he asked.

Again, she did not understand, and simply stood there, the sand seeping between her toes. She tried to speak, but every word she uttered only heightened the look of confusion on his face. He whistled back gibberish to her, and she said nothing.

How strange, he thought. She speaks only in birdsong.

He returned the next day and did not try to speak to her. He came alone with a sort of flattened, yellow object and scratched upon it with a stick, occasionally glancing up at her. She not attempt to communicate again, only watch warily whenever he was in the vicinity. She awaited the day when more of his kind found her, the paler ones with eyes that were less kind and voices less soft.

Then there were several days when he disappeared. She noted his absence with trepidation. Surely, she thought, the time would come for him to bring his companions with him to ogle her. The day when the pale ones would take her away from her land.

But when he came back at last, he was alone. He also came without his tablet in hand. Instead, he brought her a long strip of the same sort of material she had seen the pale ones wear, but rather than a coarse brown or black, this was soft, light, and woven with blue and white flowers. She took it with caution and unfolded it, as several silver objects fell to the ground. She picked them up and observed the carvings on them, strange creatures forms out of interlocking knots, rolling the glittering pendants over in her chapped fingers. Threaded through the holes in the pendants was a long, thin string woven of thread. She watched as he picked up a shell from the sand and threaded it through the string, and then another and another until they hung like jewels against the sky. He handed it to her, and she held the weight in her hand for a moment before winding it around her throat. The silver pendants hung like cold fingers against her collarbone. He cleared his throat.

“I know you can’t understand me,” she said to her, rubbing the back of his sunburnt neck. “but I believe that perhaps, in a way you can. I mean, we are both humans, and the language of the Lord is understood by all…but I just wanted to say that no one else knows that you’re here. I haven’t told anyone that you exist. They believe the island is uninhabited. And I intend to keep it so. If they knew about you, they would want to take you back to England. They would send you to a chemist or doctors or scientists and they would perform experiments. You’d end up pickled or dried or hung on a ceiling. But there needs to be someone on the island. Someone to watch the feathered dragons. They are beautiful, although the other men fear them. They call them ‘whore magpies’. But I just…goodbye.”

She watched him walk away through the trees, and did not say a word.

They departed shortly after, the great clouds billowing in the endless sky. She watched them as the floating trees grew smaller and smaller in the great white horizon, and the birds perched on her shoulders, staring into the sea as the pale ones departed. And all the while, she rubbed the shells between her fingers.  
They say that each person's life is a shell around the Beachcomber's throat. They start out white and pristine as she finds them cleansed among the waves, and grow steadily older and yellow, worn with age as the time passes. Finally, the inner core of the shell wears against the woven string so much that it drops back to the sand that birthed it. The Beachcomber will stop in her tracks to pick up the little shell, before setting it like a frightened child back into the water, letting the relentless waves engulf it in their timeless embrace once more. A human's life is measured like the shells on the necklaces of the ageless Beachcomber; in essence the same, but with a different life, a different time, and always destined back to the shore.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is based off of the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse attraction at Walt Disney World.


End file.
